Street Kings

The first drafts were James Ellroy’s and the film was called The Night Watchman until Fox Searchlight changed the title in February 2008. The project circulated for a decade: David Fincher was in talks in 1997, Spike Lee was announced in 2004, Oliver Stone was reported in 2005 and denied it, and David Ayer, who wrote Training Day, took over. By Ayer’s own account, Ellroy’s script sat in the Los Angeles of the 1990s and turned on racism and an old school department; Ayer moved it to the present and drew a corporate unit instead. He shot in the South Los Angeles districts he grew up in, with Earl West, his location manager on Training Day, handling access. He refused digital, arguing that film holds more latitude and detail in the blacks. Keanu Reeves told him it was the hardest film he had worked on: 21 hour days, every scene bar one half day, his own stunts. The 20 million dollar production opened second at the box office with 12.5 million from 2,467 screens. A good fit if you want corruption described as a shared habit of one unit rather than the fault of a single bad officer. Not for viewers troubled by sudden violence at close range; the film opens with a scene being arranged to look justified.